Civilian Police Review & Advisory Board

MEETING MINUTES CIVILIAN POLICE REVIEW AND ADVISORY BOARD​ Regular Meeting February 13, 2025, 12:00 p.m. ​ Hybrid: Zoom & Morgantown Public Library Meeting Room B Minutes by Catherine Fonseca Members present include: Richard Burks, Catherine Fonseca, Dady Dadyburjor (Virtual), Robert Cohen (Virtual), Rachel Fetty (Virtual), Megan Gandy (Virtual), Bryan Church (Virtual) Guests in attendance, Zoom and in-person 1) CALL TO ORDER: Call to order at 12:06pm 2) APPROVAL OF MEETING MINUTES January 9, 2025 minutes unanimously approved 3) COMMITTEE REPORTS i. Statistics & Reporting Committee​ Catherine reported on the February 3 Meeting with Deputy Chief Ruehmer:​ The committee and Deputy Chief Ruehmer met to discuss the Citizen Complaint/Commendation Form as well as Policing Statistics Commendation/Complaint Form Deputy Chief Ruehmer had some welcomed suggestions and feedback for the commendation/complaint form, including revisions to: ●​ rearrange fill-able areas to prioritize officer/incident information first for both commendation and complaint form ●​ include a number of specific, pre-determined allegations that the complainant can select from when filing ●​ separate out the commendation form as a stand-alone form eliminate the form instructions ●​ once increased specificity of the complaint and commendation forms has been achieved pursue formatting the forms so they are embedded on a web page, that is to say, directly integrated and fill-able on the website as opposed to a separate, downloadable form It was discussed that our revised form would be the interim solution until such a time when MPD acquires a product called PowerDMS, which is a subscription-based module that requires both an upfront fee as well as an ongoing cost. Ultimately, Deputy Chief Ruehmer would like the complaint and commendation forms to be part of the Power DMS system which MPD is investigating for possible acquisition. Acquisition of PowerDMS would also provide access to statistical reporting modules, in addition to a complaint form module, so its acquisition would serve multiple purposes and Board goals.  Deputy Chief Ruehmer agreed to send us a Power DMS template for the complaint form and provide the Board with an opportunity to review it to ensure it matches our own expectations and offer any input on tailoring the form to better suit community needs. Deputy Chief Ruehmer’s emailed response to our summary of the meeting left the committee with a lack of clarity on who would be leading the changes – would it be MPD or CPRAB? It was discussed then decided that the Board would move forward with revisions based on Deputy Chief Reuhmer’s feedback and communicate those changes once the form has been revised. Statistical Reporting Regarding the statistical reporting, Deputy Chief Ruehmer seemed to indicate that the database is less sophisticated than our initial impressions led us to believe. When inquiring about data points of possible interest, we were told that lots of manual data cleaning and counting is needed to produce those statistics. This is made all the more difficult, according to Ruehmer, when there is no crime analyst attached to the department (though they have tried to recruit this position previously). He agreed to provide us with a list of all the data fields that are captured within the MPD database, in the form of a single (but full) incident record or entry, with all fields included even where no information has been inputted. This is to help us get a comprehensive sense of all data entry fields. Action: The task force (Rich, Bob, Rachel) working on the commendation/complaint form will arrange a meeting date to discuss and implement Deputy Chief Reuhmer’s feedback for a new version of the complaint/commendation form. Catherine should be invited to the first meeting of the task force to relay that feedback in more detail. ii. Community Outreach Committee​ Megan reported that City Council’s budgetary decisions would take place in March, so we are awaiting that funding decision for the community survey’s Phase II and Phase III Megan reported that the committee has been liaising with City’s communications department who agreed to assist creating accounts on our behalf. The priority is setting up a Facebook since that is how many of the neighborhood associations communicate. 4.) OLD BUSINESS A. Status of proposal for funding Community Survey Phase 2 Discussed in the Community Outreach committee reports, skipped as a redundant agenda item. B. Report on February 3 meeting with Deputy Chief Ruehmer regarding proposal for revised forms for citizen complaints and commendations, and instructions Discussed in the Statistics & Reporting committee reports, skipped as a redundant agenda item. C. Need to Increase membership of Board Discussed the need to ask for clarity from City Council on the process of interviewing candidates, what they are looking for, how we can best support and prepare individuals we are referring to  apply to board vacancies. This would be best discussed when we have the opportunity to present our annual report to an upcoming Committee of the Whole meeting. D. Plan for regular meetings with Chief Powell Rich to reach out to set up a March meeting. The major priority for discussion is our planned review of MPD’s body cam policy. We began having those conversations last year, but had some questions we wanted to ask Chief Powell prior to making recommendations. These include inquiries about officer compliance with the written policy, equipment limitations that may result in audio delays, and what kind of storage/computing costs are associated with increased recording. ​ ​ Action: Rich to coordinate scheduling the meeting between the Chief and members of the Board for a special meeting in March. 5) NEW BUSINESS A.​ Plans for internal training of Board in 2025 The Board agreed that another training from Dr. Nolan would be useful. Areas of interest include how to increase community reliance and action in their own public safety (avoiding an overreliance on police) as well as insight into the kind of training he does with state police academy and knowledge of their curriculum (to help us get a better frame of reference for where officers are coming from). Action: Training committee to reconvene to discuss training content and scheduling B.​ Preparation for presentation of 2024 Annual Report to City Council Talking points include highlighting our budgetary request (Megan will be able to ask any questions regarding the project), our failure to produce statistics for our second year, progress made to the citizen complaint/commendation form, and need to increase our board’s membership to enable us to optimally function. Action: Catherine to reach out to Heather to get a date for the Committee of the Whole, looping in Rich and Megan to present on behalf of the Board 6) OPPORTUNITY FOR PUBLIC COMMENT None 7) ADJOURNMENT A motion is introduced to adjourn the meeting, motion passes. Meeting adjourned at 1:08pm. Upcoming meetings: General Board Meeting on Thursday, March 20, 2025 Hybrid (Zoom & Morgantown Public Library Meeting Room B) from 12:00-1:00pm (note, this is a shorter meeting than usual) General Board Meeting on Thursday, April 17, 2025, Hybrid (Zoom & Morgantown Public Library Meeting Room B) from 12:00-1:30pm General Board Meeting on Thursday, May 8, 2025, Hybrid (Zoom & Morgantown Public Library Meeting Room B) from 12:00-1:30pm General Board Meeting on Thursday, June 12, 2025, Hybrid (Zoom & Morgantown Public Library Meeting Room B) from 12:00-1:30pm